NOTE ON THE EMPLOYMENT SITUA TION M RS. PARAVANE has lost her cook, her excellent cook Loris, upon whose talented person all of Mrs. Paravane's careful house- keeping arrangements were oriented. The things Mrs. Paravane is saying about the Administration, in her neat little Georgetown house, would get her interned in Berlin or shot in Moscow, if she were located in either of those cen tres. Mrs. Paravane is the widow of the gallant and admired Captain Paravane, U. S. Navy, who died a year and a half ago of a sudden malady while ser- ving on the Asiatic Station. She saw him into his grave at Arlington on a wet afternoon six months later (three vol- leys from the blue jacket firing party and the wailing notes of "Taps" sounding in her head a long time afterward) and turned away to take up her life, being in her late forties, with sleek clipped hair just going gray, and a fresh-colored, decisive face. She put his affairs in or- der, finding that the six months' pay received at his death almost covered his debts. He left no insurance or any property except the pleasant house in Georgetown, purchased during the boom days after a fortunate transac- tion in good common stocks. There was a daughter, an ornamental young person, educated along highly imprac- ticalline.s, and a son, safe in the Naval Academy at Annapolis. The only as- sured income was the monthly pension check for $20.90-$22, less temporary Economy Act deductions of five per cent, mailed punctually by a grateful Republic to the relict of a distinguished officer of thirty-three years' service. The children were both over eighteen, so that deprived her of the $4 awarded for each minor child. Mrs. Paravane considered the situ- ation briefly, and shifted her daugh- ter from finishing school to business college. The late Captain's classmates rallied around, and one of them, now in Congress, helped his widow to a minor Civil Service appointment in the Department, paying about $1,200 a year, and the daugh- ter, after completing the short- est secretarial course available, landed something at nearly $1,000. The upper floor of the Georgetown house was turned into a desirable apartment, and rented to a New Dealer. By pinching here and scraping there, and doing without things she simply had to have, Mrs. Paravane raised her head above wa- ter and kept it so. Sometimes the wa- ter lapped at the corners of her mouth, but she was not the sort of person to submerge. The only really cheerful factor in the situation was Loris, a good-humored, brown-skinned woman who had cooked for the family dur- ing a previous tour of duty in Wash- ington and who now took on again, at the reasonable wage of $40 a month, to do the marketing and run the estab- lishment generally, with a laundress in once a week and some help from a neighborhood furnace man. Mrs. Pa- ravane often said that without Loris she couldn't have made a go of it at all. Loris had a husband, one Elmer, a skinny little darky, perennially unem- ployed, whom nobody considered at all. She also had a friend, a huge black man, who escorted her home evenings. Mrs. Paravane saw him in the kitchen occasionally, occupied with the ice- cream freezer or other utensils. 'He was her boarder, Loris explained, and was just like one of the family. His name was Homer. This winter the government put numbers of unemployed on the rolls as laborers in a project undertaken by one of the new alphabetical administra- tions, which involved the demolition of an old bridge on the Potomac, above Georgetown. Both the husband and the boy friend engaged themselves upon this profitable work at $26.88 per week. Loris at once bloomed out in finer rai- ment, and Mrs. Paravane noticed that she had a new coat, rather better than her own, and some very striking orna- ments. But Loris continued faithful and competent, and the Paravane house- hold sat tranquil on the brink of cal- amIty. I T is not known who eXplained to Loris and her boarder the full beau- ties of the new order of things, particu- larly the pension and compensation fea- tures of the same, for those employed on emergency public works. There is much about the case which is, and will remain, obscure. But the at- tested facts are brief. On a De- cember day, with a spit of sleet in the air) and more ice on the half- demolished bridge than the wreck- ing gangs enjoyed, the boy friend and the husband were working together, nobody near them, on the girders out over deep water. There was a stran- gled squawk from the husband, and a yell from the boy friend, and they 35 - .. -. . u -, :::.;'\;'<:':: tt. ',: fJJ!' "< ....:...:.,;('1 . . ......:.:> ':":::=- .....: :.... .' . -:". '" ";:.""*": . .. :' :.:'.... :;;'1"' ". t1', 'h": : .-:=>'> f.; t. . -i. . .:..... . _.;. .,, ; i 1. t;,à r I . , ::".\ "i( , , _ .. . _ _ . : : :: , _. . ' . ' -, ; :-. . "':<< ," ':", '.' ;} . ';m.. :W :'- .- . . : . /.J:: ;:: rx ".r\ " " 1 ' 'x' t4Sj:: W..;, ., . .:' J _: .-la %. . I:;,:::; ';' ..i : : if.f .t.:' . :.:.( . ;;;:. .:. :'fL, \ :: :;:;:... ::... .......X"oOIX. ....Æx : J 1.r] _::. ,'- \. f, .} . : _ _ ;,. __ . .. . ..: . . . . : . 1 _ . : . i .: ::-. "'êi- .::. ....' ,." Some like it HOT Some like it SWEET But thousands are learning to prefer Bernie Cummins. Not always hot, not always sweet, Bernie knows just how and when to vary the pressure. With the result that you will be cry- ing for more when the last Sweet Home is played. And how beautiful Dorothy Crane can sell her vocals. You can't · go wrong at the Roosevelt Grill where BERNIE CUMMINS plays The ROO EVELT Bernam G. Hines, Manaqer Madison Ave. and 45 St.. NEW YORK A UNITED HOTEL